Rex Smith: Someone reading us: priceless

Great things to see, in my opinion: An Adirondack mountain range in winter, sunrise at the seashore, my daughter’s smiling face, anybody reading a newspaper.

Yes, I like the idea of more people picking up the paper, or turning to it online. So I’m mystified sometimes when people criticize a decision we have made … like, how we played a story or the way a headline was worded … by spitting out what they must consider to be a terrible epithet: “You just want to sell newspapers!”

Well, as a matter of fact, I do want to sell newspapers. Or give them away, actually, but that would reduce the revenue our company uses to hire reporters, photographers, editors and all the other people who create the Times Union, and so it wouldn’t be in our readers’ best interests. But do I want newspapers in more hands? You bet.

Everybody who works here, actually, ought to have in the back of their minds the notion that making people want to read the newspaper is part of their job. I don’t mean, of course, that we ought to distort stories to make them more appealing, nor that we should disregard our watchdog responsibility and instead put celebrity photos on the front page.
That may briefly move a few more newspapers off the racks, but it wouldn’t meet our mission, nor would it yield long-term commercial success.

No, you sell newspapers when you create content that people need or want … such as powerful investigative reporting that helps right a wrong, well-told stories that touch our hearts and compelling photography that draws our attention. In the long run, it is not the sensational stuff that sells newspapers, but the credible. If we do our job well enough, we’ll reach people who want to know what’s going on in the world beyond their own experiences.

A few answers are clear. More people are turning to the Internet for news, including the audience for newspaper Web sites (which unfortunately isn’t growing quite fast enough to enable online advertising revenue to immediately replace print revenue, dollar for dollar, in our ledgers). People are busier than they used to be, distracted by everything from transporting kids to organized league sports to working longer hours. A more suburbanized nation means people are spending time in traffic that they used to spend with the morning or evening paper. There are just so many ways to occupy eyes and minds nowadays.

But some experts suggest another, more ominous notion: a diminishing interest in news generally. Readers of this column are news consumers, but you’re a shrinking proportion of the American population. Not only newspapers are affected by this phenomenon; television newscasts are losing viewers, and the audience for online news sites is small compared to the number of people turning to social networking sites, such as MySpace.

An intriguing response to that is taking shape in academia, notably at Stony Brook University, a State University of New York campus on Long Island. There, a new journalism school, led by Howard Schneider, a former Newsday editor, is pushing the notion of news literacy … literally, teaching students both the values of good journalism and the value that being a journalism consumer can bring to their lives.

Stony Brook students are learning how to tell the difference between news and propaganda, how to recognize bias and what differentiates the unverified assertions flowing over the Internet and airwaves from thoughtfully reported journalism. Many are studying serious news products for the first time, since they have grown up without newspapers in their homes and with TV sets tuned continually to entertainment. Their eyes are opening to a range of information beyond their own experiences, better equipping them for the responsibilities of citizenship.

Nobody who spends any time on the Web can dispute anymore the value of the vast range of information now at our fingertips. But a good daily newspaper, in print and online, offers content unavailable anywhere else … journalism you need to be an informed citizen.

Maybe efforts to teach news literacy, like those under way at Stony Brook, will help us sell more papers. That would be good for newspapers, certainly, but even better for our community. A person reading a newspaper is a beautiful sight.

4 Responses

I know of quite a few people who choose not to stay “up to date” with the news in any genre….one of their reasons…as well as one of mine…is that the news is too depressing…I feel that there seems to be..in these times…alot of “overkill” on specific news items being analyzed over & over & over again etc….one of my biggest bugaboos is when the President is addressing an issue on live television…after he is thru there is a lenghthy discussion by the news reporters as to what he said…duh…personally I prefer to “keep up” on current events because I feel that it makes me a more well-rounded person..I try not to dwell on the negative though and struggle …at times…to live my life with a positive outlook regardless of the goings on in the World

I read three newspapers a day, listen to several news outlets, and am, admittedly, a “news junkie.” However, I wish that people in this country would stop the fascination with celebrity “news”–Anna Nicole Smith, Paris Hilton, Brittney Spears, Tom Cruise, etc. Who the heck cares? When stories like this are in the news, it just serves as diversionary techniques for the things that are really important in life. Also, I think that people like to read good stories-e.g., the way the Colonie Fire Department reached out to little William B. McKay in what turned out to be the last week of his life–about REAL people instead of celebrities. Why do I care if Tom Cruise blows his nose or George Clooney has a new girlfriend? I care more about what’s happening to the economy and what I can do to help people in my community. Just my humble opinion. If people want to read about celebrities, there are many opportunitites for them to buy periodicals that focus on that genre.

Oh, I think people want to be informed all right. I think people are dying for information that will let them make knowledgable decisions, etc. They aren’t intersted in what the reporter, editor, or some actor or producer thinks or opinions. That’s why some movies out now aren’t being supported. I think it’s disgraceful what we read in the media about a president, any president, a general being portrayed as a liar. There’s a total lack of respect for the positions of authority. How do you think that looks for other countries?
Sometimes, it seems like the media thinks people are stupid and need to be told how to think. Constant bombardment of Joe Bruno while praising the new governor… we need news, not negativity. Give us the facts and let the public decide. Media should be unbiased, it’s anything but…